In 2000, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) identified three interrelated aspects of poverty. They are: poverty of money, poverty of access, and poverty of power. These, according to UNESCAP, “make the working, living and social environments of the poor extremely insecure and severely limit the options available to them to improve their lives. Without choices and security, breaking the cycle of poverty becomes virtually impossible and leads to the marginalization and alienation of the poor from the society.”

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), “globally, one person in ten suffers from hunger. One person in five lacks access to safe drinking water. While the world’s wealth has multiplied 7 times in 50 years, the number of people doomed to live in poverty continues to increase in an unjust proportion. As a result, every three seconds a child—whom we fail to protect—dies.” Furthermore, the UNDP notes that “three recent self-evident poverty trends are particularly striking: the africanization of poverty, the feminization of poverty, and the urbanization of poverty. Nowadays, about half the poor live in urban areas and this figure is drastically increasing—90% in Latin America, 45% in Asia, and 40% in Africa.”

Similarly, here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Boston Indicators Report 2002 remarks that “the numbers of families in poverty in Boston increased over the 1990s from 17,598 to 17,982, lifting the poverty rate to 15.3%.” The Report notes, too, that “poverty is also evidenced in the growing rates of family homelessness and hunger…20% of low-income Massachusetts households was not able to afford to buy enough food to meet the basic nutritional needs of household members.”

Within these global and local contexts, the implications for the College of Public and Community Service and its mission are clear and enormous. The College’s dedication to providing “an empowering and effective education to people who are committed to working for social justice, and who want to promote positive development in their communities” continues to be contemporaneously relevant everywhere. Hence, the College must keep on maintaining and strengthening its efforts to advocate for the low-income and to participate actively in ongoing local and global efforts to assuage urban poverty through capacity-building, principally in the municipal and governmental areas, as well as among the organizations of the low-income. Capacity-building must address both institutional change and human resources development.

Consequently, in order to respond to the multidimensional nature of urban poverty, our curriculum and scholarly work cover a range of policy issues, contained by a social justice agenda, including: housing and urban services; legal education and dispute resolution; labor studies; community planning; gerontology; community media, and technology; social protection and social services; early childhood education and family support; sustainable ways to rebuild communities after disasters (both natural and man-made); and the environment.

Given the quality of our academic programs and the dedication of our staff, students, and faculty to our task, it is thus with some pride that I welcome you to CPCS!

Adenrele Awotona

Dean